What a day!

Updated 4/1/2014

We’ve had a busy and full day. So we got to the hotel last night safely and crashed around midnight. Our alarms went off at 2:45 and successfully checked out of the Ibis hotel by 3:00 am. We checked out so early they didn’t even have their computers booted up for the day. After catching a free bus back to the airport we got all the way to baggage checks before we realized that the airport terminal wasn’t working yet. You could still move around, but there were no workers.

After waiting just outside of baggage checks, we got through and then we waited just outside the gate for a good three hours. We might have only needed two hours, but better bored and tired than sorry. The puddle jumper from London to Dublin was too short to get a proper nap in. We landed and got through customs without a hitch. Then we went up to the information center to see about our Dublin passes.

By signing up for the Dublin pass, we got a little green card from the nice man, directions to the bus that would take us to the city and how to get to our hostel, along with a free map to the city. He told us that there was no way we could get lost on our way to the hostel unless we were really stupid. We got here, so I guess we’re not all stupid.

When we first got into the city we went looking for our hostel. We did cross the river on accident but we fixed that at the next bridge. After finding the hostel we went to catch a ride on the hop on hop off bus tour. We got on one that had a live commentator guide and rode around with him and his driver for one full tour. We’ll almost one full tour, I conked out half way through. I was so tired.

We hopped off about the same place we had hopped on at and went to look for food. There’s was this cute pink place called the Bakehouse that we decided to have lunch at. Truthfully it was more like a brunch, seeing how neither Aimee nor I had eaten anything for breakfast. I ordered a mocha and got pancakes. Aimee got pancakes too, but she just drank water.

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The pancakes came with banana and strawberry chunks and lemon slices on the side. I ate the banana chunks and gave the strawberries to Aimee. The pancakes were really good. That travel guy Mr. Rick Steve should eat there and give them a full three star mark. When I settled the bill, I asked what the conversion rate was from the English pound to the Euro. Currently the pound is 1:1.3 on the Euro. Meaning it’s still more expensive for things but not nearly as bad as in England.

Once we finished lunch we hopped back on a tour bus and went to the Dublin zoo. With the Dublin pass it was free for us to get in. We saw lions and tigers, but no bears, oh dear. And speaking of deer, the Dublin zoo is located next to Phoenix park and is home to several herds of deer. Anyway, back to talking about the zoo. The tour guide suggested that we give ourselves two hours to walk around and see everybody. He was right about the time, we started at 1:30 and got done around 4:00.

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The bus we hopped on this time was the same one we had started our day with. The guide remembered us, which was nice. When the bus stopped at the end of its tour Aimee and I got off to go to the information center to see about away to get to the train station so we could reconfirm our activity for tomorrow. As it turned out the nice lady behind the desk called the company for us and reconfirmed it for us. She also took care of our Sunday tour and noticed our scheduling blunder Saturday night. She told us to go over to the company that ran that tour and have them fix the problem there. Both ladies that helped us out were very nice.

As things stand now, tomorrow we will be going to Cork and Blarney on the train tomorrow and will have a free evening. Sunday, we will go to Kilkenny and another city, then get back in time for the Grave digger walking tour. We will fly back to London on Monday.

When this was done we headed to the hostel to check in. We are staying in a 16 bed all female room. From what we’ve seen of our roommates, four of them are Spanish speakers. When we first got there, two were sleeping in the room and we didn’t want to wake them with our plan making. We went down stairs to the common room to see what we wanted to do next.

There was one more thing that Aimee wanted to do today and that was Mini golfing at the Rainforest Adventure. This was also another free thing that came with the Dublin pass. 18 holes of mini golf free and 10% off purchases. To get there we took a tram for the first time. For wondering around like dodos, I think we did ok. The golf was fun… Aimee kicked my but. We also got dinner there after our game of golf. The pepperoni pizza had stringy cheese and tasted fantastic. As a drink, we both had a can of Fanta orange pop. Here in Europe they don’t put high fructose corn syrup in their food and next to no preservatives. For those reasons alone I could relocate here.

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We got back to the hostel around 8. Now we are showered, packed for tomorrow with a plan as to where we are going, and soooo ready to crash for the night. Time to do just that.

Check in tomorrow for all the shananagins we get into to on the rail trip. Night all.